Endings and Beginnings

(I was asked to give a year-end message for our local congregation. Here is what I shared.)

In about a day from now, we will be welcoming a new year. However, in other parts of the world, they will enter the new year in a matter of hours.

Countries around the world does not welcome the New Year at simultaneous time because of time difference, but also not all civilizations celebrate the New Year at the same time of the year or in the same way because of different calendars and customs.

In Ancient Egypt, the holiday was celebrated when the Nile flooded, usually near the end of September. This flooding made it possible to grow crops in the desert, and the people celebrated by taking statues of their gods Amon, his wife and son, up the Nile by boat. Singing, dancing, and feasting was done for a month, then the statues were returned to the temple.

Babylon’s New Year was in the spring. During the festival, the king was stripped of his clothes and sent away, and for a few days there was a relaxation of laws. Then the king returned in grand procession, dressed in fine robes. Everyone returned to work and behaved properly. Thus the New Year gave people a new start to their lives.

The Roman New Year festival was called the Calends (meaning first day of the month, where we got our word calendar), and people decorated their homes and gave each other gifts. It was Emperor Julius Caesar who began the calendar system in which the first month is named after their god Janus. That’s why it is called January. Janus, has 2 faces, one face is looking backward or the past, and the other face is looking forward or to the future. And that’s what people do during the entrance fo the new year, we look at the past, but also look at the future.

Norman Vincent Peal, a known author and Protestant minister, spent New Year’s Eve in Rome. A friend warned him to stay inside his hotel for his own safety, because people have a habit of throwing old, unwanted things out their windows on New Year’s Eve. He explained, “If you should be walking down the street, you’re likely to have an old typewriter bounce off your head.” Peale looked out his hotel window at midnight and saw all sorts of items coming out of windows. Away with the old was the idea.

**************

But for us Christians, how should we celebrate new year and what should our celebration be about? Let’s look at a story in the Bible.

In Exodus Chapter 12:1-2

Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, ² “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.

Here in this verse from Exodus, God is about to deliver the Israelites from 430 years of bondage from the Egyptians; this is the eve of their departure from their long enslavement. And on this night, God through Moses is instituting a New Year – a new era – He is instituting the sacred calendar so that Israel and the world can know His divine plan. They are going be a free and redeemed people.

Jacob and his sons, moved from Canaan to Egypt, in the land of Goshen, during the time of Joseph who became the ruler of Egypt, and was only second to Pharaoh. The move was to escape the famine, as Egypt had plenty of food. But what started to be good have deteriorated to something bad. After Joseph died the Egyptians felt threatened by the growing number of the Israelites, so they enslaved them, and it lasted for more than 400 years.

So maybe this year has started good for you. Maybe this year 2023 started full of hope for you. It was supposed to be a prosperous new year. It was supposed to be a happy year. But something happened in your life. Perhaps a sickness, or a loss of job, maybe a loss of a loved one, or problems within your family, perhaps financial difficulties, or whatever hardships you are going through, that you are limping to end this year. You just wanted this year to go away.

Friends, God wanted us to have a fresh new start. God is going to free and redeem us from whatever bondage we are going through.

***********

When we moved to Florida, it started very well for us. This was after 7 or 8 months of having no work as we were waiting for my visa approval, and we lived from one friend’s home to another friend’s home to another’s relative’s home, we’re basically homeless, relying on the mercy and goodness of our friends and relatives. Finally my visa got approved and I started work in Florida. When my family moved to our own apartment, it was the nicest feeling in the world. Even if our rented apartment was empty and we all slept on the floor, at least it was our own place.

As times past, our stay in Florida was not working as well as we have hoped for. I was working very long hours, and I was on-call every single night. I was also working on weekends, and has to rounds in the hospital virtually every weekend. We were members of a Filipino International Church, and I even became one of the elders, but I was always missing in action because of my work. I was a slave to my work.

The last straw was that my visa would not renew after 3 years of staying in Florida. I needed a fresh start somewhere. And I asked God to show me where.

So one day, a friend and classmate from medical school in the Philippines who I also did medical training with in New York City, happen to visit Florida for a vacation. He stayed at a Disney Resort in Orlando and so I met him there. I mentioned to him about my work situation. Then he told me, that he thinks the group that he was working with in Iowa, may be in need of another pulmonary and critical care physician.

Iowa? I asked. Where is Iowa? I don’t even know where Iowa is in the map. I don’t even know Iowa exist! But this classmate of mine was the top of our class in the Philippines. He was also the top-notcher of the Medical Boards in the whole Philippines during our batch. So if Iowa is good enough for him, it must be good enough for me.

Less than a week after my classmate returned to Iowa, I received a phone call from a physician group in Iowa, asking me if I want to visit Iowa for an interview. The rest is history. We will be 20 years living in Iowa this coming February.

God gave us a new and fresh start.

***********

Now, let us look on how the Israelites should start their new year, according to the story in Exodus 12. Let us continue reading, verses 3-5:

³ Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. ⁴ And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. ⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 

The first thing they would get for the new year is a lamb. Not a new car, nor a new house, nor a new coat or a new bag. The first thing we need for the new year is the lamb. Are you getting this my friends? What we need to take first for the new year is Jesus, the Lamb of God.

So the instruction for the Israelites is not just a lamb. The lamb must be perfect. No blemish. The cutest and the most adorable one. Just like when you’re picking a pet dog among the litter, you want the most beautiful one. The most perfect one in your eyes.

And then what, let’s continue reading, verse 6:

⁶ Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight

So they would take the lamb and that lamb would live with the family for 4 days. Instead of a pet dog, they will get a lamb that will stay with them inside their household. You can imagine during those times, their houses were not big, so the lamb will be present in all their activities. When the family eats, the lamb was there; when the family plays the lamb was there: when the family prays, the lamb was there; when the family sleeps, the lamb sleeps with them. By the end of those 4 days, that lamb is part of the family.

Then on the 4th day, they will kill that lamb at sunset. Why sunset? That is the beginning of the day for them. The lamb, by that time is both cherished and mourned. Place yourself on their shoes. Can you imagine the children telling their parents not to kill the lamb that has become their pet? Because that’s how they were supposed to feel for their sins. But how much more for God to send His only Begotten Son, to die for our sins. How hard must it be for God to make that decision, but it has to be done for us to be saved.

Verse 7:

⁷ And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. 

When the the lamb was killed the blood should be placed on the 2 doorposts and lintel. We all know what doorposts are right, but what is a lintel? Not lentil, that is a kind of beans. Lintel is the beam that is usually placed on top of windows and doors.

Have you ever wondered why God asked the children of Israel to paint blood on the lintel and two doorposts of the door to their houses? Yes, it was a sign for the angel to pass over that house so the firstborn in that house will not die. But why in the lintel and the doorposts, why not at the door itself, since that will be more obvious, right? Well, I learned this only a few weeks ago during the Prophecy seminar with Pastor Rob, and so I did some research also about it. Egyptian archaeology provides an answer; one that can teach us a powerful lesson about salvation.

Egyptians built their dwellings—from the lowly slave houses to the luxurious palaces— with the same building material, mud brick. One of the work specification for the Israelites as slaves in Egypt was to make these mud bricks. Remember in the Bible, the Egyptians made it harder for them because they have to gather their own straws, which is needed, to make those mud bricks.

Why mud bricks? Because for the Egyptians, this symbolize that life was temporary and they used temporary building materials for their homes. In contrast, they built their temples and tombs out of stone, which they think will last forever, because the Egyptians believe that after they die, there is an eternal afterlife. That’s why they do the mummification to preserved the body, and they put food and other things in the tomb.

The only exception to this architectural rule was the doorposts and lintels of their mud-brick homes. These were made out of stone. Why? I’ll tell you why.

Also important to the Egyptians is their names. To the ancient Egyptian, the name was a very real part of a person. Their names needed to be preserved for the afterlife. Ancient Egyptian believed if your name did not appear in writing, you would disappear and never reach the afterlife.

If you visit Egypt today, you will find examples of names having been chiseled off the remaining statues. Hatshepsut, for example, lived just prior to the Exodus and ruled Egypt for about 20 years after her husband’s death, and she became a woman pharaoh. Sometime after her death, however, Hatshepsut’s name was scratched off many monuments, a clear effort to erase her from history and from the afterlife. As a result, scholars of ancient Egypt knew little of Hatshepsut’s existence until 1822, when they were able to decode and read the hieroglyphics on one of the walls of a tomb in Egypt.

To combat the potential loss of their names, royalty and nobility built great stone monuments with their names etched in as many places as possible. The less wealthy, of course, could not afford to do this. Instead, their houses, although primarily mud brick, were constructed with stone doorposts and lintels. On these were inscribed the name of the one who lived inside. Even if the house was destroyed, the chance of the name existing through the survival of the stone was very good. So they can live in the afterlife.

And they were right—at least on their name surviving over time. As more and more of these doorposts and lintels are found by archeological diggings, the names of their ancient owners remain intact.

When the Israelites moved to Egypt, they lived in tents. But perhaps as time went by, they learned the way of the Egyptians. They started living in houses made of mud bricks, with most likely with doorposts and lintel made with stone. They have adopted the Egyptian cultures, and probably becoming like the Egyptians in their beliefs. Could it be that the Israelites also started etching their names in the lintels and doorposts of their homes, thinking that through that they will have an eternal afterlife?

When God instructed the Israelites to paint the blood of the lamb over their lintels and doorposts, He was telling them to cover their names with the blood of the lamb. He was teaching them that salvation is only through the blood of the lamb. He was enlightening them, that the key to eternal life is only through the blood of the lamb.

My friends, our new year should start, by having our names covered by the blood of the lamb. Our salvation is only through the blood of the lamb. Our hope for eternal life is only on no other name but Jesus, the Lamb of God.

***************

In November 1964, anarchy broke out in the Belgian Congo. A Christian missionary named J.W. Tucker knew he was at risk, but decided to stay in the area. One day, a mob attacked and killed him with sticks, clubs, and broken bottles. They took his body and threw it in a back of a truck and drove a good distance, and then tossed his body to be eaten by crocodiles in the Bomokandi River in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Bomokandi River flows through the middle of the Mangbeto tribe, a people who have not heard the gospel. Few years past and during a civil war, the Mangbeto king became distressed with the violence and appealed to the central government for help. The central government sent a man called the Brigadier, a well-known policeman of a strong stature and reputation, and also was recently converted Christian.

The Brigadier was determined to introduce the gospel to the Mangbetos, as he know that it is the only way to peace. He did his best to witness, but he was met with no response. Then one day he heard of a Mangbeto’s time-honored tradition that said: “If the blood of any man flows in the Bomokandi River, you must listen to his message.”

The Brigadier then called for the king and all the village elders, and they gathered in full assembly to hear his address. He began with this statement: “Some time ago a man was killed, and his body was thrown into your Bomokandi River. The crocodiles in this river ate him up, and his blood flowed in your river. But before he died, he left me a message.”

Well, the Brigadier was converted to Christianity by the missionary J.W. Tucker 2 months before he died and was thrown into the river.

The Brigadier continued his address to the village saying: “This message concerns God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to this world to save people who were sinners. He died for the sins of the world; He died for my sins. I received this message, and it changed my life.”

As the Brigadier preached, the Spirit of God descended and people began to fall on their knees and cry out to the Lord. Since that day, thousands of Mangbetos have come to Christ as a result of the message from the man whose blood flowed in the Bomokandi River.

For this New Year, let us start by pondering of how Jesus came to this earth, whose blood flowed in Calvary, and whose blood has covered our names and our sins.

*****************